Old Books, New Readers discussion

"The Yellow Wallpaper" by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is the short story for this month. Please read it if you get the chance and talk about what you thought of it here.

That was an amazing descent into the very illness they thought they were avoiding by confining the character to bed. It hits me in a sore spot, based on personal experience. I went to the doctor with my mom because I felt so yucky and it just kept coming at regular intervals. The doctor's diagnosis: "it's all in your head". That diagnosis made me question almost everything about myself for a while. It wasn't until stories about PMS came out in the news (years later)that I started recognizing what I was experiencing. That was all it was, and it responded well to a variety of treatments. So when I read about this woman and how her treatment actually made things worse, I was so there. Our medical understanding at any given time can be as handicapped with opinion and the fashionable thought of the day as any other field of study. At any rate- that's one part of what I got out of the story!

Here is a link to the story, so you can read it for free.

http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Charlo...

Christa - Ron Paul 2012 wrote: "Here is a link to the story, so you can read it for free.

http://www.pagebypagebooks.com/Charlo..."

Thanks or the link Christa. I'm not sure I'd regard all the content as having literary merit, but interesting site nonetheless.

After reading this, I'll never look at wallpaper the same way again lol.

I found that getting inside this character was quite difficult, and I also discovered myself trying to attach a period to it - the feel of the story is very nineteen-thirties to me, but maybe I'm wrong. Now, is it me, or has the writer deliberately written this to be read in two different ways? On the one hand, the vapid, nervous wife's descent into insanity beneath the concerned eye of attentive but controlling husband; on the other an enforced stay in a hospital (bars on the windows) in which the roles of her 'husband' and 'Jenny' are much more ambiguous?

Some of the things that I thought about as I read:
The outer imprisonment reflects her inner imprisonment. Also, she's been put in the nursery- women were considered to be larger children back then.
She's the only one in the story with no socially acceptable authority. And every few lines Gilman does make it sound like a conspiracy, simply by writing from the wife's viewpoint. While that is often typical paranoia for a mentally ill person, it still leaves you wondering about the other people around the subject. Personally, I saw it the other way- they knew she had become wallpaper obssessed, and they looked at it from time to time to wonder for a moment if anything she said was true, or to wonder how much worse she was going to get. Altho that husband really came off as smarmy at times. Much of that was acceptable for the time because he represented authority on more than one level (husband and doctor and male) so how could he possibly be wrong? She, on the other hand, was a wife and a new mother (one baby), so she had the least authority and how could she be right? Most unfortunate collaboration of social roles! I think Gilman did that on purpose.

Gilman liked writing about womens' issues, and the standard treatment back then of sending a woman to bed came under her pen. It also addressed the general challenge of bedrest, like after childbirth, as well. The dullness under such circumstances can get really sharp!

The poor woman wasn't allowed to write, care for the baby, or do much of anything. It reminds me of how we sometimes forget in our internet world that we are physical entities and need to be up and doing, not just existing.

I think Lora made an interesting point about the perspective. The husband and his sister truely thought they were helping her. but unfortunately mental health was little understood at that time.
It is easy to lose yourself with the writter as the wallpaper slowly comes to life. The smooth transition makes it difficult to tell were fancy turns into disillusion.

Frederick wrote: "I found that getting inside this character was quite difficult, and I also discovered myself trying to attach a period to it - the feel of the story is very nineteen-thirties to me, but maybe I'm w..."

btw, the author wrote this after a similar encounter with insanity. Apparently, her treatment also made her worse so she decided to write a story based on her experience.

Okay, so I knew she was mentally unstable, but that was NOT what I was expecting. It was interesting to see how the wallpaper turned from atrocious to tearing it up so she could help the woman escape! Although, I have to admit I was laughing at the end when she was creeping around the room and had to step over John every time. Even though that's definitely not a good sign, I could picture it in my head and couldn't help to laugh at how absurd it looked in my mind. It was a great story that I'll definitely read again.

Frederick, I'm going to be lazy here and not look it up, but I thought the story was set in the late 1800's. Anyone?

Lora, you've made profound observations. For me, the overwhelming emotional effect of this story is frustration and sorrow at the infantalization of women back then. Goodness, I just realized, it is much like The Secret Garden, and how they kept the boy bedridden when what he really needed was to access his inner strength.

Jon, thanks; yes it could well be the late 1800's couldn't it? I confess I'm not joining in here to any great purpose because I don't particularly like the story. O.K., I know that doesn't qualify as literary criticism, but there are some things that just don't exercise my imagination, and this is one.

Speaking of wallpaper, how about Julie Harris' wallpaper in Hill House in the original 1963 "The Haunting"? Now THAT's scary wallpaper.

Hey Frederick, just friends chatting. (I'm not wild about the story either btw, I read it because I needed to proof my daughter's essay on it in h.s.).

My gosh, is it a set text? How times have changed! I remember for my 'A' level I got Lamb's 'Dissertation upon Roast Pig'. So much I've missed! (Off-topic. Sorry!)

Jon wrote: "Frederick, I'm going to be lazy here and not look it up, but I thought the story was set in the late 1800's. Anyone?"

Charlotte Gilman wrote The Yellow Wallpaper on June 6 and 7 of 1890 in her home of Pasadena, and it was printed a year and a half later in the January 1892 issue of The New England Magazine.

A little background info -- Her mother was informed after Charlotte’s birth that she might die if she bore more children (her brother was 17 months older than she.) Sometime during her infancy, her father moved out and abandoned his wife and children, leaving them in an impoverished state. Her mother was unable to support the family by herself, so the children often stayed with her “Beecher relatives” (including Harriet Beecher Stowe). Her mother was not affectionate with her children and forbide Charlotte from making make strong friendships or to read fiction. Charlotte lived a childhood of isolation until she stayed with relatives in Providence, RI where she read books from the public library and played with her male cousins.

In 1884 she married although she thought it wasn’t the right thing to do. After the birth of their only child, Katharine Beecher Stetson, Charlotte suffered a serious bout of post-partum depression. In 1888 they divorced and she moved to Pasadena, CA with her daughter and became active in several feminist and reformist organizations.

Gilman explained that the idea for the story originated in her own experience as a patient: "the real purpose of the story was to reach Dr. S. Weir Mitchell, and convince him of the error of his ways". She had suffered years of depression, and consulted a well-known specialist physician who prescribed a "rest cure" which required her to "live as domestic a life as possible." She was forbidden to touch pen, pencil or brush and allowed only two hours of mental stimulation a day.

After three months and almost desperate, Gilman decided to contravene her diagnosis and started to work again. After realizing how close she had come to complete mental breakdown, she wrote "The Yellow Wallpaper" with additions and exaggerations to illustrate her own misdiagnosis complaint. She sent a copy to Mitchell but never received a response. She added that "The Yellow Wallpaper" was "not intended to drive people crazy, but to save people from being driven crazy, and it worked."

The Yellow Wallpaper" sometimes is referred to as an example of Gothic literature for its treatment of madness and powerlessness.

If you're interested in seeing the film:
The Yellow Wallpaper PBS Masterpiece Theater 1989
Part 1- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAJm6g...
Part 2- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q8Iy1f...
Part 3- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sdk4cr...
Part 4- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YdQHS...
Part 5- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PVn2KJ...
Part 6- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPCYup...
Part 7- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNdm4U...
Part 8- http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gWJ4Zt...

Wow, how long did it take youto write that out? It was very informative though so thank you :d

Yes, an admirable piece of research, thank you. Interesting that post-partum depression was recognised then - the 'Victorians' were notoriously intolerant of mental illness generally. It explains the melting of lines between husband and doctor, too.
Intriguing woman.

Judging by Carol's research, I'd say that the "Yellow Wallpaper" revolutionized how we treat mental illnesses and other disorders. Particularly in women. :)

Catchup challenge review: Loved it! I really like Gilman's writing.

Madeline wrote: "Catchup challenge review: Loved it! I really like Gilman's writing."

I might have to re-read this one. I read it in College and remember not being a huge fan at all.

I just finished this one for the Catch Up Challenge. I didn't particularly care for this story. I did make a connection to the MC possibly having post-partum depression, but didn't know if that was a known diagnosis at the time of writing. I couldn't even tell exactly why I didn't care for the story, other than it was boring to me. I really struggled to finish reading it and it was a short story. I just didn't care about the MC and thought her husband and sister were big dummies. ;)

I read this for my 2017 Catch Up Challenge and I really enjoyed it. It was a vivid and creepy story on a women's descent into mental illness, exacerbated by the refusal of the people around her to acknowledge her needs/emotions. I got goosebumps while reading it.

I love this short story...I have read it twice and will probably read it again when the mood strikes me. I think the way Gilman wrote about a "rest cure" that actually drove the MC to madness is brilliant. At first I was beginning to be annoyed by her going on and on about that dang wallpaper! But then you begin to see her grip on reality and sanity fading. It is cleverly written. I also see it as a reminder that you can't always trust someone else to know what is best for you; even a loved one or a professional. I find the story very sad, but fantastically written.

The Yellow Wallpaper is one of the selections on my 2017 Catch up Challenge list. {SPOILER ALERT} My comments have some spoilers, so use caution reading this.
1. I rated this with 5 stars out of 5. In general, I felt that for all the brevity of this story, at the end I also felt a profound immersion into the life of one artistically gifted woman in the late 1800’s. That life was insanely limited if not dictated outright by the whims of Victorian men in power. The one line I saw over and over in the story was variations of her statement “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency---what is one to do?” That statement, and many similar statements, sounds like an insistent percussive chord throughout the mental degradation that she undergoes. As terrifying as the process seems to you and me, there is always that nonstop drumbeat that “He must know what’s best for me.” So it is little wonder that she fantasizes about the wallpaper, if only to escape such an obscenely ridiculous dictate. Having said that, this story also calls up the plight of many women of that time period, who were condemned to menial occupations and not taken seriously unless they were well-behaved wives and good housekeepers. The Bronte sisters and George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) all published works using male pseudonyms in order to escape the reluctance of all publishers to take their work seriously.
2. Is this a good story? I always ask that question when I read a piece of fiction. That is the first thing I look for. So I will answer yes to that question but with a big proviso: it is also a very troubling journey of the mind looking gradually more and more into itself, and being unable to find its way back to sanity. This makes the story for me as deeply horrifying as anything Edgar Allen Poe might have written. It rates for me as genuine Gothic horror fiction. Also consider what her fate at the end of the story might be. More on that particular Gothic horror later.
3. One very intriguing part of the narration is in the very beginning, when she writes “John is a physician, and perhaps ---- (I would not say it to a living soul, of course, but this is dead paper and a great relief to my mind) ---- perhaps that is one reason I do not get well faster.” What does she mean by “dead paper”? I took it first to mean that she was dead to the world of her love for writing because her husband forbade her to overwork herself during the recovery process. But I think the "dead paper" has a double meaning, if not a triple meaning. Yes, it represents her decision to stop writing in her journal. But I think a much deeper symbolic meaning exists in the “dead paper.” This story is all about freedom of expression and the entrapment of women at that time period. So I take it to mean that the "dead paper" is also the death of her individuality. When she stops her journal writing for the first few weeks of seclusion, she gradually loses her freedom of expression, and with that loss she also loses her individual voice and even her identity. So I think the journal is nothing more than "dead paper" in which her own identity as a woman and individual has died. I also understood it to mean the paper she was physically writing upon. She was likely using both the paper she had with her as well as the torn off scraps from the wallpaper itself. So it is a “great relief” to her mind when she thinks she can be an obedient wife by saying farewell to her artistry, creativity, and everything that makes her unique.
4. Literature in "The Yellow Wallpaper" is the healthiest means of self-actualization. So what happens when your creative instincts are suppressed by all the people around you? We see the answer in all the simple journal entries. The patient cannot suppress those creative instincts and starts to apply them to the patterns she sees in the yellow wallpaper. This is a kind of projection of her wants as she sees barriers form within the outer patterns which confine a woman, and eventually many other women, all imprisoned within those barriers. The patient eventually identifies closely with that imprisoned woman and wants to assist her in her escape. She even cares for her safety by keeping a rope on hand that will allow her to safely scale the climb down. Of course, the ultimate escape at the end is when she becomes that escaping woman, and creeps over her husband as he is passed out on the floor. The victory she proclaims at the very end is her successful immersion into her own mind, where she can creep around as she pleases free from the inordinate social constraints she knows so well.
5. The story remains as ambiguous about the narrator’s illness as it does about her identity. We cannot say what, exactly, is wrong with her, except for what we might consider today to be postpartum depression. The Victorians knew something about it, but even Sigmund Freud was at a loss to explain it. Still, we know mental illness is going to be an issue right from the first page because we get an explicit description of the treatment: “You see [John, the narrator’s husband] does not believe I am sick! And what can one do? […]So I take phosphates or phosphites—whichever it is, and tonics, and journeys, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to "work" until I am well again.” The difficulty for her is that she gets physically stronger over time all the while her mind is beginning its difficult escape from the controls of her husband and her own family. As a result, her husband sees a lot of improvement in her, and considers her various statements about changing to the downstairs room and wanting to see her family as being rational but precipitate requests, given her nervous disposition. So he sees steady progress, all because he is a medical doctor without the training to recognize cognitive or mental derangement. Back in those days, of course, psychology and psychiatry were just budding new disciplines that many doctors claimed to understand (from within their own skill sets).
6. To follow up on my point no. 2, the early Victorians had what we would now call a hideous form of treatment for women with any mental health issues. Women were frequent residents in Victorian asylums. A lot mental healthcare back then was still in private houses, and they were often run by nonmedical men who did little more than keep patients locked away. With their livings coming from the profit of the operation of these asylums, there was little incentive to discharge patients who could be detained indefinitely. The conditions in early asylums were horrible; they were brutal places where the most disturbed patients were chained in windowless rooms with straw bedding. Women were confined for reasons ranging from “puerperal insanity” (what we now call postnatal depression or postpartum depression), epilepsy, “insanity caused by anxiety” (whatever that means), insanity caused by overwork, insanity caused by childbirth, or even infidelity. Cases of melancholia associated with menopause were treated with leeches to the pubis. Women were also treated with mercury or antimony, both known to be quite toxic. Anyone who could persuade two doctors to sign certificates of insanity could put away inconvenient or embarrassing relatives in a madhouse. Women – with lower social status, and usually less power and money – were the most vulnerable. In short, there was very good reason for the Victorian “lunacy panics” that occurred in the 1800’s. These panics often involved the pattern of women being falsely imprisoned in insane asylums by their husbands out of spite, financial gain, promoting the husbands’ affairs with other women, or a mix of all these motives. This is the very real Gothic horror of this story.
7. In my readings this year, I have encountered two insane women from the Victorian era. One is of course the unnamed narrator in this story, but I condition my claim about her insanity with the fact that she writes to the very end like a well-bred society lady. There is no cursing and no random thought process that is completely disconnected from reality. Instead, it is a broadly developing obsession over the wallpaper that seems to give her some kind of mental strength to tell her narrative in the face of overwhelming suppression. It gives her a personal and moral view of the world that keeps her integrity fragile but still intact. She should not be making any kind of sense, and yet she is right to the end of the story. I think that is because Charlotte Perkins Gilman wants her to be an “every woman” with a character to summarize and heighten the plight of many other Victorian women of her own time. So she is not really insane at the end, so much as she is trying to find her own voice that has been denied to her for so long. However, the other woman is Bertha (Rochester’s insane wife in “Jane Eyre”). She comes from mysterious circumstances in the Caribbean culture that suggest an inherited family trait. In her case, she eventually exhibits the same traits of madness that caused her own mother to go mad. She has no voice to speak of. Bertha is mad to the point of not speaking, but instead raging loudly. She also has the intelligence to know how to escape her attic space and walk around the house setting fire to people and furnishings. Rochester could certainly confine her to an insane asylum, but with no assurance she would get the care she needs. So these two women each face different expectations, but much the same fate, namely seclusion, confinement and little therapy.

I read this for my 2022 Catch-Up Challenge and I really liked it. I found this story of a woman suffering a nervous breakdown that develops into a serious case of mental illness utterly enthralling. Especially the central motif of the story, the yellow wallpaper with its moving shapes and odour, which can be read in a variety of ways, is a very clever idea, in my opinion.